On this day in 1952, former Rep. Kathryn O’Loughlin McCarthy died in Hays, Kan., after an extended illness, at age 57, having served a single term in the House.

In nominally Republican-controlled, predominantly Protestant and tradition-oriented northwestern Kansas, she was anything but a typical politician: a Democrat, a Roman Catholic and — at the time of her election to Congress — a single woman. But her family political roots, her empathy for farmers and cattlemen who had been devastated by the Great Depression and the nationwide Democratic tide in the 1932 election that swept Franklin D. Roosevelt into the White House propelled her to victory.

O’Loughlin had defeated eight men for the Democratic nomination in a district that encompassed 26 counties. Only one Democrat had represented the district since its creation in 1885. She then successfully challenged Rep. Charles Sparks, the two-term incumbent Republican, winning with 55 percent of the vote. Shortly after taking office, she married Kansas state Sen. Daniel McCarthy.

Assigned to the House Education Committee, she fought for an emergency federal grant of $15 million for private, parochial and trade schools, focusing on the need to raise teacher salaries and put more money into home-economics and agriculture-instruction courses.

“The children of today cannot wait for the passing of the Depression to receive their education,” McCarthy told her colleagues.

By the start of 1934, the Depression had compelled more than 2,600 schools throughout the nation — more than 300 in Kansas alone – to shut their doors. Aware that many lawmakers objected to federal aid for non-public schools on the grounds of separation of church and state, McCarthy responded, “That is all well and good and must be continued as a permanent policy, but this is temporary emergency legislation, to meet a time of stress.”